Three years ago I was living in the middle of nowhere, on an income which, after rent, usually left me with between a hundred and two hundred dollars a week for utility bills and groceries.
Financially, the situation has not much changed. I can be fairly certain that, until December, my income will be rent plus a hundred and forty-seven dollars a week. Bills are up, because it's so much colder in Melbourne, but rent is (for the time being) still a wee bit less than I was paying in my sunny seaside purgatory.
Of course qualitatively my life is incalculably better now. It is so much easier to be broke in inner Melbourne. Almost anything I might want to do is at or near zero-cost and within walking distance (or a $2.50 concession fare tram ride away).
If I say so myself, I am a thrift shop fashion plate. Unless you notice the ten dollar Kmart sandshoes, you'd never guess I was on my uppers. Charity collectors' eyes widen with glee as they behold such an obviously lucrative mark approaching. Needless to say, I swiftly disappoint them.
So financially, nothing is worse, and in so, so, so many other ways, things are incalculably better. So why are my savings dwindling where three years ago I was managing to add to them (albeit very gradually).
It can only be the cost of groceries. I barely spend any discretionary money on anything else. Where three years ago I would stop at the supermarket two or three times a week, usually spending between ten and twenty dollars a visit, it's now rare to walk out with my purse less than twenty dollars lighter.
Like any good utility-maximising economic unit, I'm trying to follow the principle of Chained CPI, substituting downwards in quality — or at least variety — in an attempt to hold prices constant. Pasta and rice now feature with increasing regularity; the meat component, while never large, is only rarely a recognisable animal product and much more often takes the form of hamburger mince; and my fruit and veg are sourced exclusively from the discoloured, misshapen, and well-aged produce specialist stalls at the Queen Vic Markets.
As far as I can see, my own personal experience vividly confirms Isabella Weber's sellers' inflation thesis. By virtue of the fact that my own economic activity has so few confounding variables (making me the almost ideal self-controlled experiment) it can only be the supermarkets.